View full sizeKindergarten students at Orange Beach Elementary held their annual Mardi Gras parade through the hallways on Feb. 8. New city-funded security upgrades at the school are drawing national attention. (Julie Gerstenschlager/Orange Beach Elementary)

ORANGE BEACH, Alabama -- The city’s quick response to increase security at its elementary school following the tragic shootings in Connecticut has gained so much attention that even an official from Sandy Hook Elementary called the school.

On a night when the City Council unanimously approved a service contract for panic buttons that are now worn by every employee at Orange Beach Elementary and upgraded security cameras at the school, Mayor Tony Kennon said the school received a call from Sandy Hook Elementary seeking input on the upgrades.

According to Orange Beach Police Chief Billy Wilkins Sr., OBES Principal Lori Brocato received a call from Newtown, Conn., in addition to many others across the country after USA Today and other national media outlets shared the story.

In December, a week after 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary were killed by a 20-year-old gunman, the Orange Beach council took swift action and approved $15,000 to begin security upgrades at the school and to assign an armed, full-time officer to the school -- all of which have since been implemented.

The city has only one school, as students move on to middle and high school in neighboring Gulf Shores.

Tuesday’s approval of a 4-year, $500-a-month service contract with Coastal Security is pending a final OK from the city attorney. Barring any issues, the contract should will become effective March 1.

The new surveillance system is made up of a Digital Video Recorder with the capability of recording up to 32 cameras that can be viewed remotely by police, and the panic buttons, which in most cases are worn around the users' necks, enable officers to respond immediately to the school.

When a button is pushed, blue lights throughout the school go off, and the school automatically goes into lock-down mode, where children are locked inside their classrooms.

Coastal Security also helped upgrade most of the school’s video security cameras at no cost. The company’s owner has a grandchild at the school and initially volunteered his services.

“This is phase one,” Kennon said of the electronic security measures. “We’ve had two trial runs and had a police officer on site in under 2 minutes along with the police officer that’s already on site.”

He said phase two is the school fortification phase, “where we want to look at fortifying all entrances and windows in some type of cost-effective fashion to hopefully reduce the ability of someone to blast away at a locked front door.

“We’re going to start looking at that over the next few weeks and come up with a price.”